We’ve all been there: staring at the blank sheet of paper with no idea how to start. There’s a massive project, but where do you even begin? Sure, twirling in your chair eating Goldfish crackers for an hour was a nice distraction, but that doesn’t mean you’re any closer to the project being done. I’m going to use writing as my main example, but the concepts can be applied to almost any kind of project.

Break It Into Smaller Steps

At the beginning of a project, often you’re looking at what seems like an insurmountable wall of awfulness. But no matter how long a book, they were all written the same way: one word at a time. Break a massive project into smaller steps. Sure if you think about having to write an entire 300-page novel, it seems impossible, but if you just try to write only one page today, that seems much more doable. Figure out a small task that can be done that builds towards the big finish. Remember, a drop of water doesn’t seem like much, but enough drops of water and you have an ocean.

The Ugly First Draft

In her book Everybody Writes, writer Ann Handley tells us to “embrace The Ugly First Draft (TUFD).” The basic idea is that is we worry too much about how the first draft looks, we never make any progress because we’re constantly going backwards and erasing what we’ve already written. By embracing The Ugly First Draft, we’re able to dive into a project and just get it written. Once you have your Ugly First Draft, you’re then able to go back and clean up and edit and make it as pretty as you can for the second draft. But by removing our internal editor during the first draft, we can create much more efficiently. Just get the words on the page. Just start. Don’t worry that’s it’s terrible, just make it a thing that exists. A terrible first draft is way better than a great concept on an empty page.

Take a Break and Return with Fresh Eyes

Humans are fragile creatures, if every evil talking alien in a sci-fi movie is to be believed. We get overwhelmed and stressed out. Too often people push themselves a little too hard, and their work suffers because of it. So take a break when you need to. Sometimes by just being able to clock out for a bit and take some breaths or watch a sitcom or go for a run, we can hit refresh on our minds and come back to the project feeling reinvigorated lets us see the project with fresh eyes. Maybe that wall that you were stuck at turns out to be tall but not very wide, you just had to back away to see that you can walk around it.

Ask for Help When You Need It

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Too often people feel ashamed or too embarrassed to ask for assistance when they need it. Ask! How much time would we save in corporate America if people were more willing to just ask a question or get clarification rather than “not wanting to bother” or look stupid? People (that aren’t massive jerks) like helping people. If someone has a question, humans usually want to help them, especially in a team environment like most companies try to foster. Nobody does anything completely on their own, we all need help in different ways. It’s better to succeed with help than fail by yourself.

Just keep taking one more step. Progress is the key, and I can’t stress this enough: progress is never a bad thing. These steps can really help you get through the work day. So when you look at that mountain of a project, just remember that to climb Everest you have to take it one step at a time. Just, don’t use up all our your oxygen ten feet up.

OTHER blogs

Check Out More Posts

Often, bosses will come in with an idea: let’s make a video! And...that’s it. That’s the end of their idea, but there’s so much more to it. Knowing precisely what kind of video you need helps tremendously to actually get it done. Not every video is equal. If you want proof of this, just look at the filmography of John Travolta (sorry Mr. Travolta).

We’ve all been there: staring at the blank sheet of paper with no idea how to start. There’s a massive project, but where do you even begin? Sure, twirling in your chair eating Goldfish crackers for an hour was a nice distraction, but that doesn’t mean you’re any closer to the project being done. I’m going to use writing as my main example, but the concepts can be applied to almost any kind of project.

Videos are made up of two main components: the visuals and the audio. But, in a time where auto-play videos are muted on social media, what’s the best way to effectively use audio in your videos so that your message isn’t lost on mute, but is improved when included? How do you know which options are right for you to use for audio in your video content?

It can be tricky sometimes to navigate the business world and stay completely ethical. Maybe you found out a piece of information no one else knows that you can use to your advantage. Maybe you don’t correct your boss’s incorrect assumption about a co-worker who’s also up for a promotion you’re trying to get. Maybe you stay on the clock after you’re done with work to answer Facebook messages. Keeping a strong sense of personal ethics is more than just not stealing from the company (which is also a no-no), it’s about being honest and doing what’s right in all aspects of business.

What makes video such a powerful medium? Why is it that even small toddlers natively understand videos? Why are “how-to” videos more popular than “how-to” books? Why are movies and television more popular than radio or novels? They’re easy for any human to comprehend, even children that can barely talk seem to just absorb Elmo videos (over and over and over and over again). Every single day, 1 billion hours of video are watched on YouTube.

If there’s one universal truth about marketers, it’s this: we’re all trying to sell something. It might be a shiny new product, a service to a business, or a political candidate, but it’s all about sales, right? Not quite, because marketers need to understand it’s not just about selling something. Understanding what your audiences really want is vital to your success.

Not everyone in the business world studied English in college. In fact, I think it’s safe to assume most didn’t. Unless you’re a writer, editor, or just have a random passion for grammar, it’s likely that once you slogged your way through Macbeth and To Kill a Mockingbird (or at least watched the movie versions or skimmed the Sparknotes), you felt free. Because of this, the professional world is rife with grammatical errors, misspellings, and other things that make English teachers’ brains twitch.

Adding a new employee to a company can be an awesome, exciting event. It can also be an awkward nightmare. There’s a fine line between a good and bad experience for a new hire, and balance is absolutely vital to welcoming the newcomer while not scaring them away either.

Celebrities love to post pictures of their healthy meals and videos of them working out with their personal trainers in the middle of the day on Instagram. It’s easier to stay healthy when you have the time and resources of a celebrity. But what about the rest of us? How do we stay healthy while typing on our computers for hours and sitting through way too long meetings? How do you maintain a healthy lifestyle in an office?

Keeping up with the latest and greatest fashion trends is exhausting (not to mention prohibitively expensive for those of us that don’t have our own line of rocket ships). Luckily, in a workplace setting, we’re not being judged on the same level as if we’re walking a runway in Milan. Still though, you don’t want to be known as the office slob, so here are some super easy, basic tips for dressing professionally and looking good at work.

Usually, when people hear the word “animation,’ they think of cartoons. When we talk about animations, especially for businesses, we mean so much more than just cartoons. Animation can be 2D, 3D, a blend of both 2D/3D, or things like motion graphics. Animations can be used to announce products or services, explain complicated processes, tell stories, or even just to make a fun, lively showcase for whatever message you’re trying to share with the world.

With the increases in identity theft, cyber crime, and hacking these days, it’s best to keep yourself as protected as possible. Although sentences like these are usually followed by ads for expensive anti-virus or online protection services,

You may have heard the oft-quoted statistic that when Google made their doodle a playable version of Pac-Man, the US economy lost an estimated $120 million in productivity (although that number has been criticized). That’s a loss of productivity on a massive scale. How do you address your own productivity, and make it better?

At work we’re surrounded by people we may not have necessarily chosen to be around, which makes it easy to feel like we lose control of our environment. The good news is that we do have control over how we respond to it.

When it comes to our personal finances, other than our paychecks, we often consider it a completely separate issue from our work. However, it’s not that simple. Your personal finances and professional life at work...

Burnout isn’t just a great Green Day song, it’s increasingly a real problem in the professional world. While American workers’ productivity climbs, so does the prevalence of burnout. More than just being tired, burnout is a condition of feeling emptied, exhausted beyond function.

Ads need to be honest. Of course, ads tend to be selective (making the good sound great while ignoring the downsides), but unless you want to get hit with negative buzz about “false advertising” (or possible lawsuits), you must ensure that you’re being honest in your ads.